Rocking Your World 2018: Week 9

I am starting this week with a couple of funny pictures that have caught my eye. The first was posted by a friend to wind up her friends and family in UK.

Just a bit of fun. No malice intended, and we don't get it all our own way. The last few days have been wet and windy, and there is certainly more rain to come during the coming week. But in between the downpours, we have had some quite warm sunshine.

This second photo was posted on facebook by a bar in Snaith, and it did make me smile. It is a bit more creative than your average snowman don't you think?

And while on the subject of snow, how about this for a cold, but beautiful scene.

This is the icebound harbour in Aarhus, Denmark where my son lives. He belongs to a swimming club who swim right here, all year round! They break a hole in the ice at the base of the steps so swimmers can enter the water for a quick splash before going to one of the two floating saunas at the end of the pier. This is how one member described the experience; 

"The body enjoys pulsating blood in all the vessels, it's like having champagne in the blood." According to the club website they mostly swim in what they politely call "Adam's costume", because when they get out, the cold wind would freeze any swimwear immediately. In fact today, the club is actually closed; a rare occurrence, because the two main sauna's are inaccessible, but my son says he is going down to have a look over the weekend. There's no accounting....! 

Seriously, I am really glad that I am not in UK right now, where conditions are far worse than for an average winter. So I hope everyone is staying at home at much as possible, wrapping up and staying by the fire, and for those who do have to go out, I pray you all stay safe.

Here we have had another fiesta day, which though lower key than some of the others, is actually extremely important for the Spanish people, because on 28th of February, it is Día de Andalucía. All the shops, schools, etc are closed, and most places have some sort of event. In our village this takes place in the big marquee that is left up after Christmas for this day. It is decorated with the green and white Andalusian flags, and arrangements of green and white flowers.

The local dance schools put on a show, along with the village choir who this year looked lovely in their red and white dresses.

The dancing started with the little ones, who were so cute, and who already have a great sense of rhythm and style.

At the end of their set, they dug into the pockets on their pinnies for handfuls of rose petals and glitter paper leaves which they threw into the crowd. But most of them could only throw as far as the front of the stage, so they then had to be swept away to make the floor safe for the next set of dancers!

Then we saw a small group of slightly older girls. They have a lot of attitude already don't they?

The dancing school is run by two older girls from the village, who are themselves, very accomplished Flamenco dancers. So when the choir had sung some songs, these two girls danced while they sang. So much of the dancing is done with their hands.

I liked this picture because it shows how dramatic the dance can be.

At the end one girl danced on her own. The hollow wooden stage is a perfect sound board for the stamping that is done, and the crowd roared with approval at her final flourish.

I love to think that these ancient traditions are still being handed down through each generation.

The marque was full, with rows of seats in front of the stage, and lots of folk standing behind them. The long green tables you can see running down the marquee are laden with food, plates of cold meats and cheeses, salads and bread, and when the show ends, the covers are removed, and everyone takes their chair to a position around one of the tables, to enjoy a good (free) lunch with their family and friends.

We went to enjoy the dancing but came home when the lunch was served. Once the tables are cleared away, there is music and dancing until late into the night. It was so windy that night that I am surprised the marquee was still standing in the morning, but by lunch time the workers had dismantled it and taken it away, until the next time it is needed.

The rest of the week has been fairly straight forward. Yesterday I met my friend Cati to hand over a donation for ASADIS from my church. They are one of the charities we support on a regular basis, and I usually act as liaison with Cati as I live in the same village as her. They are always so grateful for any help we can give them.

Another outreach our church is involved in, is sending food to Zurgena Town Hall to help the most needy families in the area. This week four of our members took another fourteen bags of food there, which will ensure some deserving families have food and drink this week.

I have been working hard to finish off another crochet project but I am not quite there yet. You may remember the little squares I was making with a pallet of seventeen Autumnal colours. Well the squares are done, and I laid them out to get the arrangement right - following the charts provided by Lucy of Attic 24 I was quite pleased with how it looked.

I have now joined all the squares together and made a start on the border. It has one row in each of the seventeen colours so it will take me a while. Maybe next week I will be able to show it to you completed.  I am keen to get it done as I want to start on another one, and the first part of the instructions were published this morning! This one has fewer colours in it, and I decided not to use the designer's colours, but to choose my own, in shades of cream through to orange and dark brown.

I ordered the wool online and that has arrived, so now I just want to make a start on it, but I am determined to finish the other blanket first.

Why is it that my friends have dogs who love going to the groomer, and sit patiently while their hair is trimmed, washed and blown dry, while I have one who just causes chaos. It doesn't help that Kim is such a big boy, but he doesn't even like me brushing him. He has to put up with it though, and tolerates me brushing his back and chest, but I am wary of going too far down his back or anywhere beyond that! So every now and then he has to go to groomers to have his back end cut, and his thick coat stripped out, and I thought now might be a good idea before he starts moulting. Last time we took him, they phoned me and asked if I would collect him wet, because he got so stressed by the hair-drier, that the vet was worried he might have a seizure. So I told them in advance today, not to try and dry him, but soon after we got home they phoned to say he was getting "a bit excited" and could they give him an injection to calm him down! So this time we collected him dozy and wet! But he is shiny clean and fluffy, and is nice and tidy at the back end, so it was worth it, and when he got back home, he soon settled down to his usual peaceful self.

He was  still a bit wobbly on his feet at first and needed a reassuring rub from dad, but soon he was on his bed and slept for the rest of the morning. Now he is right as rain again, the big silly boy!

Meanwhile, as it was raining and windy, Paco and Luna decided to stay indoors, and they looked so sweet cuddled up together.

And now it is time for me to get ready for choir practice, so I will quickly link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles, and I'll be back later to see what has kept the rest of you smiling this week.

Rocking Your World 2018: Week 8

Well even in a relatively calm week, the days seem to fly by, and looking back on the week, I wonder what I did with them all. But one thing that did make me smile was this picture of our youngest son Ben as a baby, popping up in my Facebook memories.

I had posted it on his birthday when he hit thirty last year. So this week, of course, he became 31, but he is still, and always will be, my very special baby.

As you must know by now, he is a talented musician, and loves to sing his own songs, as well as covers of others, and in January I posted about the pantomime that he, and several other family members, were in. Last week they had the 'end of season' party, etc, where they hand out awards to some of the cast, and decide on the theme for the following year's panto. Ben was given two awards: one for Best adult improver, and the other for Best vocals, so he was very pleased with that. Now I am hoping that soon I will get to see the DVD of the show.

He had some even better news this week when he was offered a new job he had applied for. So probably around April, he will move from being a conductor on trains from New Street Station, to be the one who trains all the new conductors, plus ticket office staff, and everyone else as they learn about safety for workers on the railway. I think he feels the same, but for me the best part is that after fifteen years of doing some pretty difficult shifts, anything from 4.00 in the morning to gone midnight, he will finally be a 9-5 man, making it so much easier for him to commit to any activities in the evenings such as panto rehearsals, so I am really pleased for him.

We had another special service at church on Sunday. It was special for many reasons, the first being that it was our first service with Rev. Vincent, as for his first week he was at our sister church in Mojacar. Also we started the service with four blessings. The first was for two couples celebrating important wedding anniversaries. One for a thirtieth and the other was a golden wedding. After 50 years of marriage, their rings were rather 'worn' so for their anniversary they gave each other new ones, and these were blessed before they were exchanged. Then there was a blessing for a cross that was given to Tony, who is just starting his training as a lay-reader. When they assist at services they wear a cross around their neck and we usually present them with this at the start of their studies. Finally we had a blessing of a different cross. Our building is actually a village catholic church which is now only used for fiestas and funerals, so we are allowed to use it, but we have promised not to add anything to the walls inside. However, we were given permission to hang a small cross on the outside wall, and one of our congregation had a lovely wrought iron one made, which was blessed before it was hung in a recessed area near the door. It is a lovely design.

On Monday, a new shop called Zoe's Emporium, with the added description of "Kitchens and Constructions", opened in our village, just across the green  zone from our house. Now Chris and I have been tentatively discussing revamping my very small and rather badly designed kitchen, since the Autumn, so I asked him to come to the opening of the shop to see what they had on offer. It turned out to be run by two English couples, who will design, build and install any units etc that are required, and they are agents for the electrical goods too. So yesterday, the two men came round to see my kitchen, listen to my ideas for improving it, and add a few of their own. Now we are waiting for their estimate, and then we will know whether or not we can go ahead with it. So I am very excited. It will be pretty awful while the work is being done, but wonderful when it is finished --- if it gets done! I live in hope!

We had a very lively and interesting discussion at our house group on Tuesday when we looked at some of the women in the Bible. Next week I have agreed to host it here, so I need to do some sorting out before then.

We have had some really warm sunny days, with one day that reached into the upper twenties around lunch time, and also some very chilly days. On Wednesday night we had a huge thunder storm and torrential rain that rather took us all by surprise. Yesterday was sunny but there was a very cold wind that whistled round the corners of the house. I did a load of washing in the morning and put loads of pegs in each item as I hung it on the line, so I didn't have to go fishing in the green zone for any escaped garments again. It was quite a struggle to get it hung out, but the upside of that is that even the big bath towels were dry within a couple of hours. 

It was more sheltered at the front of the house, so I decided to spend some time working in the garden. A few weeks ago I bought hyacinth and baby daffodil bulbs in Lidls. I always search through them for the pots with the most promising buds, because I know they will have a short life out here. I also bought a few winter pansies, and they have all sat in a tray on the porch just waiting for some attention. So now I have a pot on each side of the bottom step, and they make me smile every time I see them. I made them almost match - I think it is because I am a Libran, I like things that are balanced and come in pairs!

I also had one pink hyacinth that I put in a pot with a rather sad little carnation plant, that has been neglected all winter, but I am hoping by the time the hyacinth goes over, it will have recovered and will give me lots of flowers for weeks to come.

When I was walking through the village at the weekend, I saw one of the big planters that are found in many of the streets, and this one was full of bright red kalanchoes. They were all in flower and they looked fabulous. 

They are wonderful flowers for growing out here. I bought three plants in different colours, way back in the early autumn, and they have bloomed ever since. They were in my triple-plant stand by the front door, so the top one was removed to make way for a poinsettia at Christmas. But that has finally keeled over after nearly three months of looking beautiful, so the kalanchoe is back. They are getting a bit straggly now, but while I was out there yesterday, I cut off all the dead heads, and any leaves that were damaged though the winter, and I was pleased to see new buds on them.

There was a red one in the top pot but it is much smaller and doesn't look quite so healthy, but I had another yellow one that was in the planter a year ago, and when its flowers died I just set it aside and ignored it. But when I picked it up to see if there was anything worth keeping on it, I found it was covered in new buds. So I trimmed all the dead heads off and tidied it up, and that now has top-spot on my planter.

And that is just about my week, but we did have one other event that was as usual a happy occasion. Last Saturday was our own village carnival. It was a very small affair compared with the lavish Aguilas Carnival that we went to last week, but it is probably the happiest day in the village calendar. Everyone is out to have fun. I will just run through a few of the costumes. Anyone can dress up and join in the procession around the streets, or just be a watcher from the side, but some groups make elaborate costumes, and others are hired. Here are just a few.

It is a real family affair and you see lots of parents in their fancy clothes with a matching toddler or even a baby in a pram.

Some little ones have such elaborate costumes that I wonder how they can walk in them, but this year my favourite was a dear little Nemo. She was so excited and kept running away with a patient parent or grandparent rescuing her every time she went too far. She really made me smile.

Now it is almost time for me to go to choir practice, but I just have time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and I will get back when I return home, to see what everyone else is smiling about this week.